SEEK NZ Employment Report - December

NOTE: In this report job ad and applications per job ad trends data is reported to one decimal place for the period June 2025 – December 2025. Further changes were made to the composition of the data used in these reports, including the inclusion of company listings late last year. See notes at end for more information. 

*Applications per job ad are recorded with a one-month lag. Data shown in this report refers to November data.

National Insights:

• After six months of rises, job ad volumes fell only slightly in December, down 0.3%.  
• Applications per job ad declined just 0.1%, with competition remaining strong. 

Region Insights: 

• The strongest m/m growth was recorded in Taranaki (3.0%), Manawatu (2.1%), and Gisborne (2.1%). 
• West Coast (-2.0%), Hawkes Bay (-1.9%), Auckland (-1.1%) and Waikato (-0.2%) recorded monthly declines.

Industry Insights: 

• Construction (3.4%), Engineering (2.6%), and Trades & Services (1.5%) recorded the strongest monthly growth.
• Most industries are now recording annual growth in ad volumes, led by Construction (42.9%). 

Rob Clark, SEEK NZ Country Manager, says:

“This first decline in ad volumes in over a year was only slight, but has halted the stable-to-positive trend we were enjoying throughout 2025. Despite the pause, some sectors are demonstrating positive longer-term momentum. 

“Ongoing and new investment in major infrastructure projects continues to drive employment growth in the Construction and affiliated industries, with most regions recording rising demand for workers in those roles. 

“However, not all sectors are growing, with softer activity in the Professional and Consumer Services and Public sectors stagnating monthly growth in Wellington and leading to a decline in Auckland. 

“Overall, the long-term data points to a recovering labour market, with pockets of expanding opportunities– albeit at a measured pace, as we head into 2026.”

National Trends

National hiring momentum slowed in December, with job ads decreasing 0.3% m/m. This slight drop represents a break in trend, however small, after job ads rose steadily for the prior six months.

The major cities led the change in momentum, with Auckland falling 1.1% m/m, and Wellington remaining stable, while the more regional areas continue to grow. 

Annual growth in job ads slowed slightly to 6.7%, from 7.5% the month prior. While all role types have risen over the past year, there has been notable increase in part time (9.4% y/y) and casual roles (7.2% y/y) over the past 12 months (see Figure 3). 

Applications per job ad fell for the second month, dropping slightly by 0.1%. 

Figure 1: National SEEK job ad percentage change m/m with Company Listings included (blue bar) and excluded (pink dot).

Figure 2: National SEEK job ad and applications per job ad percentage change trend - December 2021 to December 2025.

Figure 3: Trends over time by work type

Region Trends

Growth in the North Island outside of the cities drove the majority of demand for the month in December, with the largest rises in Taranaki (3.0%), Manawatu (2.1%) and Gisborne (2.1%). This was driven by increased hiring activity in the Construction sector.

Auckland recorded declines both m/m (-1.1%) and y/y (-0.7%), while Wellington remained steady m/m, after recording 13 months of growth. In Auckland, the monthly decline was due to falling demand for Retail & Consumer Products (-5.2%) and Hospitality & Tourism (-3.3%) workers among other industries. 

Annually, the South Island is recording strong double-digit growth, particularly

Tasman (20.5% y/y), West Coast (18.3% y/y) and Otago (18.2% y/y) and Canterbury, where upcoming construction projects are driving increased demand for Engineers and Construction workers, has recorded a 15.8% increase in job ads y/y.

Figure 3: SEEK job ad percentage growth/decline by region, comparing i) December 2025 to November 2025 (m/m) and ii)December 2025 to December 2024 (y/y).

Industry Trends

In December, declining demand for workers in three industries in particular drove the monthly drop in job ads; Retail & Consumer Products (-2.2%), Information & Communications Technology (-1.5%) and Hospitality & Tourism (-1.1%). 

Conversely, demand for Construction workers continues to bolster ad volume, with a 3.4% rise in ads nationally and across all regions. Annually demand has risen 42.9% and, together with double digit annual growth for Engineering (17.6%) and Manufacturing, Transport & Logistics (12.2%), the Construction sector is driving positivity in the labour market.

The majority of industries are now recording annual growth, with the smaller hiring industries of Farming, Animals & Conservation (23.7%), Consulting & Strategy (23.3%) and Advertising, Arts & Media (22.0%) posting significant y/y rises while Mining, Resources & Energy (-11.6%), Insurance & Superannuation (-7.1%), and Science & Technology (-8.0%) remain lower y/y. 

The industries with the largest growth in applications per job ad in November were Science & Technology (4.6%), Design & Architecture (4.3%) and Farming, Animals & Conservation (3.8%). 

Figure 4: National SEEK Job Ad percentage change by industry (December 2025 vs November 2025) – Ordered by job ad volume

ENDS

Banner photo by Ron Lach.

The data contained in this report can be downloaded here.

About the SEEK Employment Report

The SEEK Employment Report is New Zealand’s leading employment index and provides a comprehensive overview of the New Zealand Employment Marketplace. The report includes the SEEK Employment Index (SEI) which measures only new job ads posted within the reported month to provide a clean measure of demand for labour across all classifications.

To improve this index and continuously ensure its market accuracy, SEEK has recently implemented three main changes: 

1. From this report the data is reported to one decimal place for the period June 2025 – December 2025 and moving forward. This allows us to report more accurately on small changes in trend. 

2. Reporting on trend estimates in the SEEK Employment Report rather than seasonally adjusted estimates from August 2025. Trend estimates provide a more reliable guide to the underlying direction of the data and are more suitable than either the seasonally adjusted or original estimates for business decisions. The trend estimates focus on the longer-term underlying trend and are less susceptible to short term movements.Additionally, charts have been indexed to the average of 2016 as opposed to the average of 2013.

3. The inclusion of company listings into the SEI from November 2025 to better reflect the full range of ad sources on SEEK. Company listings are job ads re-posted by SEEK from other sources and are a small portion of SEEK’s AU and NZ job volumes. The below chart shows the impact of company listings on the index, which are back dated to 2016. 

The following chart shows the minimal effect from the inclusion of company listings on year-on-year growth.

The SEI may differ to the job ad count on SEEK’s website due to a number of factors including a) the trend adjustments applied to the SEI; and b) the exclusion of duplicated job ads from the SEI.

Caution is recommended when interpreting trend estimates during the COVID period as large month-to-month changes in variables generated multiple trend breaks. 

The applications per ad index contains a series break at Jan 2016 when the calculation of this series changed from using gross variables (inclusive of all SEEK job ads) to net variables (removing duplicate job ads). This change has a negligible impact on recent data points, but caution is recommended when interpreting data immediately following the series break, and particularly in 2016 where growth rates have not been adjusted for the series break.

Disclaimer: The Data should be viewed and regarded as standalone information and should not be aggregated with any other information whether such information has been previously provided by SEEK Limited, ("SEEK"). The Data is given in summary form and whilst care has been taken in its preparation, SEEK makes no representations whatsoever about its completeness or accuracy. SEEK expressly bears no responsibility or liability for any reliance placed by you on the Data, or from the use of the Data by you.